R.E.A.C.H. Program
Rising to Educate Awareness
through Community & Hope
To bring this program to your facility, click here to send us an inquiry.
R.E.A.C.H. is our outreach program in which classes to the community are offered to help facilitate stress relief and better overall mental health. The course includes movement exploration and is open to every level in a safe, supportive, nonjudgmental and nurturing environment. Through guided meditation, visualization, movement technique and exercises, movers will be empowered to connect with their bodies in a meaningful way and gain a greater sense of full embodiment and connection with their own bodies and with others in the class.
*We are recently implemented this program with Women in Recovery, a division of Family and Children’s Services here in Tulsa in 2023 from February through April.
GOALS:
To facilitate active learning through guided meditation techniques, visualization, movement exploration and exercises that focus on the breath as the initiation of movement to encourage relaxation, stress relief and overall mental health awareness.
To empower movers to achieve full dynamic embodiment and connection with one’s own body to achieve maximum freedom of physical and expressive potential.
To enable movers to connect with their bodies in a meaningful level and encourage connecting with others, as a way to facilitate greater mental health.
To provide a safe space to be able to express oneself, and connect with others, in a supportive, nonjudgmental and nurturing environment.
To bring the community more tools, through our self-care classes, that can be used at any time for stress relief and better mental health overall.
Erase the Stigma Through Dance
Erase the Stigma Through Dance began in 2020 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with the mission of engaging communities in mental health awareness by fusing mental illness advocacy and education with the art of dance through classes, events and yearly symposiums. In 2023, we decided to merge and have Erase the Stigma Through Dance become the Advocacy Program of Oklahoma Movement. This was a very natural next step for us, as both of our missions align greatly and Founder of Oklahoma Movement, Jen Alden, and Founder of Erase the Stigma Through Dance, Nina Madsen Puckett, have been working together as colleagues and best friends for over a decade.
In November of 2022, Erase the Stigma Through Dance presented the first of it’s kind mental health and dance symposium, “Changing Perceptions by Moving Minds” at the Tulsa Ballet Studio K. The symposium featured Keynote Speaker, Dance Icon + Guggenheim Fellow, Bill Evans who spoke, taught a one hour somatic movement class and performed two solo works, one of which was a tap piece accompanied by local Tulsa Jazz Musician, Jordan Hehl.
The symposium was emceed by Tom Madsen, (Nina, founder of Erase the Stigma Through Dance’s father) who flew in from NJ. Tom and Nina both gave short speeches advocating for mental health awareness, and Tzipporah Gerson-Miller, LCSW gave an hour long speech on the intersection between dance and mental health.
Oklahoma Movement presented a shortened version of our evening length work, “Between Us 2: REWIND” and Christina Schneider, Director of ORU and member of The Bell House performed The Bell House’s “She Drew a Picture of a Whale.”
Oklahoma Movement is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Our mission: Oklahoma Movement is a collective of artists that empowers and inspires our community through movement.
Oklahoma Movement aims to bring current issues surrounding mental health, addiction, and social inequality facing our community to light. It is our belief that movement is something in which we can all relate to and seek to enable the community to experience the many benefits of movement and dance.